These days, the talk is all about prevention.
Whether it is AIDS, crime, terrorism or obesity, there is always someone lamenting how we live in a society that reacts to problems we face instead of taking measures to prevent them from happening in the first place.
There is nearly universal agreement that prevention rather than reaction would be ideal. And many officials and ordinary citizens across the country feel strongly enough about the importance of prevention to raise ideas and propose measures that would help solve many of the problems faced by society.
Unfortunately, when it comes to actually implementing such ideas, political ideology and personal bias inevitably cloud the issues and get in the way of changing the status quo.
This week, the U.S. Congress failed to extend a provision of the Patriot Act that was designed to monitor and conduct surveillance on “lone wolf” foreign terror suspects. This was a measure that was considered very important to the U.S. intelligence community, and we will never know how many acts of terror were prevented by its passage.
And yet now, because partisan politics was the order of the day, this prevention technique has been repealed.
Another example is that of the constant debate over abstinence education in schools.
Research and common sense both point to the fallacy of stimulating teenagers’ sexual appetites during the most vulnerable and hormone-crazed part of their lives, yet many seem to think that to promote abstinence would somehow destroy society as we know it. And thus, the one step that would take us closest to teen pregnancy prevention is foiled.
Finally, consider the legislation currently before the Florida Senate regarding legalization of firearms on state campuses.
Many emotionally charged debates have raged over the past couple of weeks, during which the main issue has been muddied by both sides of the argument.
Some claim that students need the ability to draw a gun on a potential assailant, while others make the case that all this brandishing will result in accidental shootings.
Yet both sides fail to see that this is not necessarily an issue of safety but one of crime prevention. The main issue is that the mere presence of guns would prevent most violent crimes from being attempted because would-be perpetrators would know that there is always the chance of coming face-to-face with a gun carrier intent on stopping the crime.
There is a reason that schools are the most common choice for violent, armed attacks. Very rarely does one hear about a shooting in a workplace or a county fair because there is always the chance that an armed, law-abiding citizen could save the day.
Thirty years ago, when frat houses, dorms and pickup trucks on campuses across the fruited plain were known to contain large quantities of legal firearms, school shootings were not a problem. Only when the right to bear arms was infringed upon and guns were banned from campuses was open season declared for a madman to enter a university and take his vengeance on society.
And now, when we are faced with a real opportunity to implement a proven measure of crime prevention, politics and peoples’ irrational fear of firearms comes to the aid of perpetrators.
Unless lawmakers begin to boldly step outside political lines and turn the widespread talk into actual action, the only thing that will be prevented is prevention itself.
Bob Minchin is a fourth-year electrical engineering major. His column appears on Fridays.
